aviation

An Engineering Giants documentary episode following a British Airways Boeing 747-400 through a D-check, the heaviest maintenance inspection, in Cardiff. The aircraft is stripped down and inspected nearly everywhere.

An Al Jazeera investigation into Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, featuring current and former engineers who voice safety concerns. It covers quality control problems at the South Carolina plant and the roots of the battery problems that grounded the plane.

Mentour Pilot's 56-minute account of the MH370 disappearance and what is now known, including the WSPR radio tracking technique and other sensing methods. It was made ahead of renewed search efforts.

LEMMiNO's 25-minute documentary on the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It walks through the official investigation's findings and the leading theories, including satellite data and hydrophone recordings.

An Al Jazeera English People & Power investigation from 2010 into safety problems with the Boeing 737NG, featuring whistleblowers on cracking parts, hand-made structural components and an alleged cover-up.

A long rebuttal arguing that the Wright Brothers truly invented the airplane, responding to other YouTubers who credit others. It walks through the engineering breakthroughs the Wrights achieved, such as control and wind tunnel work.

The first episode of the 1996 PBS documentary series on the creation of the Boeing 777. It follows the design, build and certification process, including meetings with subcontractors.

A Bloomberg documentary on how Boeing's failures around the 737 Max crashes followed a shift in company culture and cost-cutting. It covers the grounding, the stock drop and questions about the company's future.

Footage of a crash test of a Boeing 727 deliberately crashed in the Mexican desert, shown from multiple angles inside and outside. It is taken from a Channel 4 documentary.

A feature-length film by the Makani team chronicling their thirteen-year effort to build energy kites that harvest wind power, with footage from test sites in Hawaii, California and Norway. It shows the engineering, the team and the eventual shutdown.

A BBC Four documentary following Alan Bond and Reaction Engines as they pursue the Skylon spaceplane and its SABRE engine. It covers the history from HOTOL and the heat-exchanger breakthrough.

A 1953 US Navy training film explaining the basic mechanisms in mechanical fire control computers aboard ships. It shows how gears, differentials and cams solved mathematical problems in permanent mechanical form.

A compilation of the 1977 BBC series The Secret War, a documentary on British scientific and technical efforts in WWII, including radar, German navigation beams and V-weapons. It features interviews with people who were there, including Albert Speer.

Ben Anderson's VICE documentary shows embedded reporting on Afghan security forces and US Marines in Helmand during the troop drawdown, exposing incompetence, drug abuse and corruption.

Part one of Montemayor's animated-map documentary on the Battle of Midway, told using only the information available to the Japanese side. It focuses on Nagumo's dilemma.

A New York Times Opinion documentary tracing Soviet and KGB disinformation, from the 1980s AIDS origin hoax to modern campaigns like Pizzagate. It features former KGB officers and the people who tried to counter the lies.

An episode of Gwynne Dyer's 1983 documentary series War, about how military basic training turns recruits into soldiers. It covers the psychological side of conditioning.

An animated account of Day 1 of the Desert Storm air war on 17 January 1991, covering the 2,775 sorties flown against Iraqi strategic targets in the first 24 hours.

A very long, detailed look at the A4/V2 rocket turbopump, the steam-turbine-driven twin propellant pump system. It covers the peroxide and permanganate catalysis that drives the turbine. This is part 1 of a series on V2 components.

A very long video essay by Shaun on the decisions and motivations behind the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with a detailed timeline and argument that they were not militarily necessary.

Machine Thinking tells the story of the Cold War Heavy Press Program, the giant forging presses that make parts for aircraft, missiles and turbines.

Neil Halloran's animated, data-driven documentary visualizes the human cost of World War II and compares it with other wars and the trend toward fewer war deaths in recent decades.

A 1973 NBC News documentary on the US nerve gas arsenal, covering leaks in Okinawa, a Utah test that killed thousands of sheep, and the long-term hazards of storage sites. It won an Emmy.

Tod's Workshop fires full-weight medieval arrows from a 160lb English warbow at reproduced medieval armour. Armour curator Dr Tobias Capwell, an archer and bowyer give historical context and discuss the results.

Part one of Sandia National Labs' first-person documentary on the use control, detonation safety and survivability of US nuclear weapons. It covers nuclear sharing in NATO and how control of use was separated from possession, leading to the always/never problem.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day documents boarding a US Navy nuclear submarine in the Arctic during the ICEX 2020 under-ice exercise. It is the first of a series on life aboard a fast attack submarine.

A two-minute clip from the documentary The Fog of War in which Robert McNamara recalls Fidel Castro explaining how close the world came to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

A VICE report from 2011 in which Suroosh Alvi revisits the gun markets in Pakistan's tribal areas, a stronghold of the Taliban. It shows weapons being made and sold by hand and a country described as a powder keg.

An Empire Files documentary by Abby Martin presenting a critical account of the Afghanistan War, from the CIA's role in the 1980s to the stalemate of the 2010s and 2020. It argues the war was driven by imperial interests.

A US Air Force film on the Heavy Press Program, which built some of the world's largest metal forging and extrusion presses for aircraft, starting from German presses taken after WWII.

A dramatization of a hypothetical Soviet first strike that destroys US bombers and Minuteman missiles, filmed with US Air Force cooperation. It is a short version of the 1979 documentary First Strike.

Archive footage from 1964 of Royal Marine Commando volunteers filmed on a field exercise after taking LSD at Porton Down. It documents a British military drug trial.